Virgin chief Richard Branson and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore at the announcement of the Virgin Earth Challenge prize. The prize will give US$25 million to the individual or organisation that develops a way to remove one billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere annually.

Credit: AFP

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LONDON: Twenty-five million U.S. dollars are on offer from the inventor who figures out a way to remove one billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere annually.

Virgin chief Sir Richard Branson on Friday launched what he called the world's biggest prize to inspire innovators to develop a way to remove greenhouse gases from the Earth's atmosphere.

Branson announced the Virgin Earth Challenge prize, worth A$32 million, at a joint press conference here with Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president turned global environment campaigner. The prize will go to the individual or group able to show a commercially viable design resulting in the net removal of man-made atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least 10 years, without harmful side-effects.

"Could it be possible to find someone on Earth who could devise a way of removing the lethal amount of CO₂ from the Earth's atmosphere?" asked Branson. "How could we get every young, creative, innovative thinker, every inventor and every scientist to put their minds to it?

"The challenge we are laying down to the world's brightest brains is: to devise a way of removing greenhouse gases at least the equivalent of one billion tonnes of carbon per year, and hopefully much more."

Both Branson and Gore hope that governments will match the prize fund. The pair will be joined in adjudicating the prize by British diplomat Sir Crispin Tickell, an authority on climate change; scientist, author and 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery; James Hansen, director of the U.S. space agency NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and British scientist James Lovelock.

The judges will meet annually to decide if any project over the past year has met the criteria. The removal must have long-term effects and contribute materially to the stability of the Earth's climate. Five million dollars will be paid at the time of the judge's decision, with the rest to follow 10 years later if they then decide the goals have been achieved.

According to Gore, "Up until now what has not been asked seriously on a sustained basis is 'Is there not some way that some of that carbon dioxide could be scavenged out of the atmosphere?'

"We are now in circumstances where the more difficult questions have to be asked and the more difficult ventures have to be undertaken.

"There are some research teams that have begun to look at possible avenues for solving this problem but it is right at the beginning. This is right at the cutting edge."

Steve Howard, chief executive of international non-profit The Climate Group and an advisor to the judges, said there were an estimated seven billion tonnes of carbon dioxide currently being emitted every year into the atmosphere.

"This throws a bright spotlight on the issue. We need cultural, business and government imperatives to deal with the problem. We are not there yet and a prize is required to do that."

"There's no current real technology that's managing to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. We're nowhere yet," he said. "For 25 million dollars, people will do extraordinary things. It's to fire people up and say: 'let's do this.'"

It is not the first time Gore and Branson have teamed up to promote green issues: last September Gore backed Branson's pledge to spend US$3 billion (A$3.86 billion) on reversing global warming. The former vice-president, who brought global warming to prominence in his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, told the Virgin boss at the time that he was in a unique position to make a difference.